Insurance is the transfer of risk of loss from one entity to another in exchange of a premium. The first written insurance policy was the “Hammurabi Code”. The “Hammurabi Code” offered basic insurance in which a debtor did not have to pay back his loans if he faced some personal catastrophe like disability, death or flooding. The code of Hammurabi also provided financial insurance in which, if a merchant received a loan to fund his shipment, he paid the lender an additional sum in exchange for the lender's guarantee to cancel the loan if the shipment was stolen.
Insurance was also seen in the form of ‘general average’ where the merchants of Rhodes whose goods were to be shipped together paid a proportionally divided premium which used to be reimbursed to any merchant whose goods were jettisoned during storm or sinkage. The Achaemenian monarchs were the first to have the insurance registered. The registered insurance provided aid, in case, the insurance holder was in trouble or wanted to construct a building, to set up a feast, to have his children married.
The origin of health and life insurance in 600 AD was introduced by Romans and Greeks when they organized “benevolent societies” which cared for the families and paid funeral expenses of members upon death.
Insurance as we know it today can be traced to the Great Fire of London, which demolished 13,200 houses. In reaction to this event, Nicholas Barbon started insurance for buildings. In 1680, he established England's first fire insurance company, “The Fire Office,” to insure brick and frame homes. The first insurance company in the United States underwrote fire insurance and was formed in Charles Town, S.C., in 1732.
Today, insurance is a full-fledged industry. The insurance companies collect premium from policy holders, invest the money and reimburse it when the policy holder passes away or when the policy matures. There are different types of insurance policies available today and these can be classified into three major types:                Life Insurance: Provides a life cover. Money is reimbursed when the person ceases or when the policy matures.        Health Insurance: Provides reimbursement of medical bills and hospitalization charges.        Liability Insurance: Includes all other types of insurance including motor, property and professional/business mishaps.        
Currently the insurance can be classified into following categories:
Life Insurance: Insures life of the user through various products mainly term plans, endowment plan and unit linked plan which has various investment options.
General insurance: This has got various products which insure assets to liabilities of the user. It contains products like Fire, burglary, Health, motor, engineering, aviation, liability, life and many more. Here insurer accepts the risk for a particular period, usually for a year and collects the premium in advance for the same and in case of loss is due to the covered perils then the claim is paid to the user.
Currently, insurers sell life insurance policies linked to investments like mutual funds which provide greater return on investment and also provide tax saving benefits.
Insurance companies cater to needs of policy holders by offering protection through various products which fall in life, health and liability insurance categories. Typically, a policy holder will invest in at least two to three products of a company for instance life insurance, motor insurance and property insurance. Keeping track of the premium due dates and maturity dates of policies to prevent the money from lapsing is a challenging task for policy holders. The task gets all the more difficult when policy holders have to accumulate funds at the last minute to prevent the expiration of the policy.
Also, with the volatile market the policy holders constantly need updates on the NAV (net asset values) for the particular policy, they also need to be notified of launch of new policies or change in existing policies. In addition, policy holders also expect quick redress of their queries from customer care executives. If, policy holders have multiple products from different insurance companies it gets inconvenient for policy holders to wait in different queues and/or dial different telephone numbers for customer support for their diverse insurance products.
Presently, customer care executives are to be contacted for any amendments or for cancellation of the policies. This causes a lot of inconvenience to the policy holders as there can be a delay in resolution of their request and the customer executives need to be contacted each time the policy holder wishes to upgrade his/her insurance policy, pull out a receipt for past premium payment, update his/her personal details.
Today, there are many insurance companies offering products in similar product lines, it therefore becomes essential for an organization to retain its existing policy holders and also attract new customers. To stay abreast in the competition, the insurance companies are constantly striving to introduce new schemes and increase customer delight.
Therefore, there is a need for a system which will enable insurance organizations to provide a single platform to the policy holders where they will have minimum dependence on customer support executives for updating personal details, upgrading the policy, retrieving past payments receipts, checking the latest NAV values, processing claims and the like. In addition, there is a need for system which can provide a single role based access to the entire insurance data for all stakeholders of the insurance system including insurers, brokers, agents and third party administrators, policy holders, franchisee and the like. Moreover, there is also a need for a system which provides insurers with a window for advertising their products by communicating directly with the customers.